Forgiveness

Jacob – the Prodigal Son

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Not many days later, the younger son gathered all he had and took a journey into a far country, and there he squandered his property in reckless living. Luke 15:13 ESV

Of all the parables that Jesus told, the one we call, “The Prodigal Son’” is likely everyone’s favorite. We love this story because at some point in our lives we have been (or maybe still are) that prodigal son. And though this wonderful story seems unique to Jesus, I was surprised recently when I began to see parallels with another young man, in the Bible whose name was Jacob. We usually think of Jacob, wrestling all night with an angel, or of His tricking his father into blessing him, by pretending to be his older brother Esau. But I have rarely thought of how, just like the prodigal, Jacob ran away from his family at a very tender age. Though, Jacob got to feed sheep while the prodigal was feeding pigs, Jacob still ended up doing hard and thankless work. Instead of the good life that Jacob had hoped for when he lied to gain his father’s blessing, Jacob ended up a thousand miles away herding sheep.

Photo by Quang Nguyen Vinh on Pexels.com

Why does any of this matter? Because, while the prodigal’s problems seem to be solved quickly in Jesus’s parable, our real-life prodigal problems take a lot longer to fix. Children run away and decades latter we are still praying for their return. Maybe we are the ones who have been running from God’s calling, and half a lifetime has passed us by. Jacob’s story of redemption spanned twenty-years and eight long chapters in the book of Genesis. From the very beginning though, God was watching over Jacob, long before Jacob was looking for God. While Esau, loved pleasing their father by bringing in fresh game from his hunting, Jabob stayed closer to home, working on pleasing his mother. When Esau came in from a hunting trip exhausted, Jacob showed no mercy and bargained for a better place in the family by selling his own twin brother a bowl of stew. Jacob was devious, willing to lie and unconcerned about the welfare of his brother, yet, the Bible says that God loved Jacob and didn’t give up on him. In that same way, If you have wept tears, and given up on praying for a prodigal in your family, know that God is still at work. God has ways of breaking through stubbornness, our pride and sin, not with harsh punishment, but by grace. Stay tuned for a surprising meeting in the desert, where Jacob first begins to hear the voice of God!

Multiply Forgiveness

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Peter came up and he said to Him, “Lord, how often will my brothet sin against me and I forgive him?” Matthew 18:21 ESV

The forgiveness Peter hoped was good enough, entailed adding and subtracting. But the Lords’ answer took him by surprise, when Jesus moved the conversation from addition to multiplication. Peter’s problem, like ours is that we add up our brother’s sins thinking that we need to subtract from our own resources to forgive them. We forget that it was Jesus who paid the terrible price of pardon and that He washes sin away with multiplied grace!

The Cross is Enough

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Who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification. Romans 4:25 ESV

When Jesus rose from the dead, things were confusing, and the world seemed to turn upside down, but everybody knew one thing for sure – The tomb was empty! When the men guarding the tomb saw an angel, they passed out cold! Later, that morning when the women came, they saw that the was stone rolled away and they ran as fast as they could to tell the disciples! By the time Peter and John arrived, all they could find was the empty burial cloths. Can you imagine what kind of questions filled their minds? Finally, the answer came as Mary Magdalene stood weeping outside the tomb, Jesus came close to talk with her, and He wants to talk with you and me today.

Just as all of these people found something far better than what they were looking for: God wants you to find that same something today. He knew that we needed hard evidence because the grip of past failures in our lives could only be broken by a victory stronger than any failure or sin. That something is our resurrected Lord! His life is proof positive that God forgives our guilt, and His resurrection tells us that the cross was enough to wash away our sins. No matter who we are, there is good news, because all the selfish choices of our past have been washed away by the blood of Jesus. God raised Jesus Christ from the dead, not just for us to celebrate on Easter, but so that every day, when we face our failures, we can remember that the cross was enough. The empty tomb is proof positive God has forgiven and set us free to serve Him forever!